UPMC Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh is developing an EHR-based alert system to help clinicians screen injured babies and older children who may have suffered abuse, according to news website Politico.
These injured patients are often too young to explain their bruises and fractures, and if caretakers are responsible for the injuries, they may not tell their clinicians, who typically must flag young patients for abuse screening based on their own intuition.
The EHR-based alert system will make the flagging process more objective and could eventually help staff intervene before abuse happens, Rachel Berger, MD, chief of the hospital's child-abuse prevention program, told Politico.
Dr. Berger is building a system in the hospital's Cerner EHR that could scan a patient's record for indicators of abuse, including past injuries or unexplained symptoms.
She wants to develop a predictive algorithm that pulls public data sets, such as school records, prior abuse reports or a parent's criminal history, to find children who may suffer abuse in the future.
Although it may take years for Dr. Berger to build a strong predictive algorithm, UPMC already has an EHR alert that flags emergency room patients whose injuries could be caused by abuse.
Physicians don't screen for abuse consistently, even in cases where abuse seems likely, but a computer alert related to abuse can help them increase their awareness when the patient or family may not meet their preconceived profile of abuse, Dr. Berger said.